Dr. Marvin Wachman (1917-2007) was a great advocate for educating young people. In a distinguished academic career, he served as president of both Temple University and Lincoln University and led the Foreign Policy Research Institute as president from 1983 to 1989. Throughout his life, he remained a passionate believer that “you never stop learning.”
Established in 1990, the Wachman Center is dedicated to improving international and civic literacy for high school teachers and high school students.

December 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Soviet Russia. Both dates give reason to reexamine the history of Eurasia, a vast region with many ethnic groups and multiple religions, at times united under authoritarian governments, at other times divided between dozens of countries.

“He was trying to play up surprise, but he doesn’t understand the reasons at all why we’ve been forecasting this, which is to get as many civilians out as possible and to push for as many defections from ISIS as possible,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and former Army officer.

Watts explained the strategy of encouraging any ISIS supporters within Mosul to defect.

“[ISIS] just lost [the symbolic Syrian town] Dabiq, so if you take Dabiq first, then maybe you get a lot of defections and people running for the hills,” he said. “That’s why they kept saying ‘We’re starting now.’ When you have the Iraqi army and a lot of these units that aren’t the American army, you want to thin the herd as much as possible before you send them in.”

It was also no secret that the Iraqi army was moving in on Mosul — it’s ISIS’ last major stronghold in Iraq, and Iraqi forces have been retaking surrounding towns as they close in on Mosul.

“There is no surprise when you’re taking Mosul after two years,” Watts said. “[ISIS] can see the Iraqi army surrounding them on the periphery.”

Watts blamed bad advisers.

“Really this comes down to his advisers,” he said. “He’s got, in my opinion, horrible counterterrorism and national security advisers.”

The Foreign Policy Research Institute, founded in 1955, is a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests. In the tradition of our founder, Ambassador Robert Strausz-Hupé, Philadelphia-based FPRI embraces history and geography to illuminate foreign policy challenges facing the United States. More about FPRI »